travel and sorrow

An Armchair 'Grand Tour' of Italy, A Room With a View and Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark

The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles conducts an 18th century 'grand tour' of Italy using its art collections to illustrate the artistic and cultural side of the celebrated event. Princeton's Wordnet defines the term, Grand Tour, as:

"an extended cultural tour of Europe taken by wealthy young Englishmen (especially in the 18th century) as part of their education"

The online site poses and answers the question, Why Italy?

"The primary destination of the Grand Tour was Italy, with its heritage of ancient Roman monuments. 18th-century taste revered the art and culture of the ancients. The British, in particular, were lured to Italy by their admiration of antiquity and their desire to see firsthand such monuments of ancient civilization as the Colosseum in Rome, and such wonders of nature as the volcanic eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, near Naples."

"Display and spectacle were all important in the 18th century. Cities such as Rome, Venice, and Florence put on elaborate religious and civic festivals that involved public processions and lavish temporary architecture. The greatest artists and architects of the day, Filippo Juvara, Giuseppe Vasi, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, were also stage designers. Even such academic pursuits as archaeological excavation had their theatrical side; 'discoveries' were sometimes staged for the delight of eminent visitors. Performance could take place at home as well as in public, as in Lady Emma Hamilton’s 'Attitudes,' a series of poses based on ancient subjects."

Of course, we could move onto the 20th c. for E.M. Forster's A Room With a View for Lucy Honeychurch and Charlotte Bartlett's Grand Italian tour, available for a rainy or snowy day's reading at Gutenberg.

Or, you could read Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters on Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Of her 'travel' book, William Godwin, her future husband wrote:

"If ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book. She speaks of her sorrows, in a way that fills us with melancholy, and dissolves us in tenderness, at the same time that she displays a genius which commands all our admiration."

From the introduction to Letters:

"The interest of this book which describes her travel is quickened by a knowledge of the heart-sorrow that underlies it all. Gilbert Imlay, had promised to meet her upon her return and go with her to Switzerland. But the letters she had from him in Sweden and Norway were cold, and she came back to find that she was wholly forsaken for an actress from a strolling company of players. Then she went up the river to drown herself. She paced the road at Putney on an October night, in 1795, in heavy rain, until her clothes were drenched, that she might sink more surely, and then threw herself from the top of Putney Bridge."

"She was rescued, and lived on with deadened spirit. In 1796 these Letters from Sweden and Norway were published."

Culture and Arts, Relationships and Going Places, Art and Museums, Travel, Senior Women Web

An Armchair 'Grand Tour' of Italy, A Room With a View and Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark

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